WALKING ELEANORA TO her car at the end of the day, Marco texted his sister. “I’m just letting Chiara know I’ll be back in New York in case she needs me.”
Eleanora nodded and smiled. On a normal visit, it wouldn’t surprise her that Marco would walk her to her car, but his overprotectiveness that morning at breakfast added to his weird reactions about the baby were beginning to concern her.
“We both decided to go to the family cabin in Vermont for Christmas with Dad, and it almost seems like our texts are a way of ensuring the other doesn’t bail.”
She glanced at the umbrella pines that lined the parking lot, inhaling the still-warm November air, as she walked the last few feet to her car. “Are you planning on bailing?”
“No. But that’s the point. We talked about going there every year for the past three years, but always find a reason not to go.” He paused as if considering his next words, but eventually shook his head and said, “I think it just reminds us all of Mom’s death.”
“Oh, Marco! I’m so sorry. I should have thought before I asked.”
“No. No. It’s fine.” He looked up at the pretty blue sky. “It’s not like we’ve been stagnating.” He glanced back at the lush hotel and his face shifted from unhappy to happy in the blink of an eye. “We’ve accomplished a lot.”
“Yes, you have.”
“But lately we seem to scatter at Christmas.”
She nodded at his phone. “Looks like this year will be different.”
“Let’s hope.”
He reached around her to open her car door. “I’ll call tonight with specifics about our trip home tomorrow once I arrange things with the pilots. I should have my assistant do it but keeping busy is good for me right now.”
She smiled in agreement, got into her car and said, “Goodbye. See you tomorrow.”
He said, “See you tomorrow,” then stepped back to let her pull out.
The way he watched her as she drove off made her take a long drink of air. She knew he and his family hadn’t had Christmas together for a few years, but she hadn’t taken the timing into consideration when she told him they were pregnant. They’d slept together in late August. The months that had passed before she’d taken the pregnancy test had been too busy to think about an upcoming holiday. Plus, it was still warm. With the exception of telling her parents she would visit for the holiday, she wasn’t thinking about Christmas yet.
But he was. And getting together with his father and sister clearly upset him—and his sister. If he was worried that she would bail, he must have his suspicions.
No wonder he was nervous and antsy and having trouble processing everything. From here on out she would be more careful how she presented things to him.
Glad he’d left her alone that night, so she’d have some time to think about things as she packed, she headed into her apartment. After dumping her purse on a convenient chair, she made herself a sandwich for dinner, then frowned at it. With the way Marco watched her, that sandwich would probably be the last normal supper she’d be getting for a while.
She finished eating and was going to shower but decided to get her suitcase off the dusty closet shelf before she did. Using a small step stool, she reached up to get the suitcase. It slid off the shelf too quickly and she grabbed for it. With one hand on the handle and the other bracing the body of the case, she tossed it to the floor.
A sharp pain pierced her belly. Clutching it, she gasped. But after a few seconds, the pain went away. A little more careful this time, she lifted the suitcase onto the bed and began packing. Halfway through, pain rippled through her belly again.
She stopped, put her hand on her lower abdomen. This pain was different.
She took a breath, then another. The pain lessened in severity until it went away.
Almost like a contraction.
Sitting on the bed, she squeezed her eyes shut. She had no idea what was normal and what wasn’t in a pregnancy. When her sister went through this, she’d been hundreds of miles away in the Midwest while Eleanora had been in Manhattan. If she’d had troubles, she’d never spoken of them.
Of course, she might not have had troubles. Her pregnancies might have been normal—
Meaning, Eleanora’s pregnancy wasn’t normal?
With the pain gone and her head full of scary things, she pushed herself off the bed and gathered clothes for her trip. When her suitcase was packed, she headed for the shower. Nothing had happened in the hour it had taken her to pack. The first pain could have been a muscle spasm from lifting the suitcase. The second one? It might have been nothing.
She stripped and was about to step into the shower when she realized there were droplets of blood in her panties.
She froze.
But she quickly realized that adding the pain and the blood, no matter how miniscule, meant something.
She raced into her bedroom, threw on sweatpants and a T-shirt, slid into sandals and headed for the hospital. It was too late for a doctor’s office to be open, but she also hadn’t yet chosen an obstetrician. Besides, this problem seemed to call for a hospital.
She arrived and headed into the Emergency Department. As she rushed inside, butterflies filled her stomach. She really needed Marco right now. Attraction be damned. She was alone and scared, and he was the one she wanted at her side.
After registering at the front desk, she pulled out her phone. He answered on the first ring.
“Hey... I...um. I’m at the emergency room.”
“What?”
She squeezed her eyes shut. She didn’t want to rattle him. She didn’t want to feed her attraction. She took a breath and tried to sound calm. “I had a few things happen and decided to take precautions—”
He didn’t even wait for her to finish. “What hospital?”
She told him the name of the hospital at the same time that a nurse called for her. She disconnected the call, and the nurse took her back to an exam room. After a fifteen-minute wait, a doctor gave her an exam and explained that some pain and even some spotting were normal. But to prove to her that everything was fine, he would do a scan.
Marco burst into the room just as the doctor began the scan.
The old man laughed. “I’m guessing you’re the father?”
Out of breath, he raced to her side. “Yes! How is she?”
Eleanora said, “I’m fine,” as the doctor said, “She’s fine.”
“The baby?”
“Fine too.” The doctor pointed at the screen beside Eleanora’s bed. “See?”
Eleanora glanced at the screen and saw a lot of blurry stuff and something that looked like a bean. But it was the sound of the heartbeat thrumming into the room that stole her breath. She’d always understood that pregnancy meant there was a child growing inside her, but hearing the heartbeat filled her with emotions she couldn’t describe. Love came to mind. So did joy. But it went beyond that. The reality that that little bean was her child filled her with awe.
She blinked and caught Marco’s hand. “Do you hear that?”
His mouth slightly open in astonishment, he nodded.
She laughed. Happiness and wonderment fluttered through her like a warm breeze. Up until this moment, being pregnant had been a concept, a fact but more of an idea than reality. Now, suddenly, everything became real. She wasn’t pregnant as much as she was having a baby. A child. She was becoming a mom.
She blinked up at Marco. “That’s our baby.”
He stared at the screen as if dumbfounded. “Yeah.”
She glanced at the doctor. “And he or she is fine?”
“From everything we can tell at this point, your baby is fine.” He rose from his stool and took off his gloves. “Have you seen an obstetrician yet?”
“No. Actually, I haven’t even chosen one.”
He walked over to the sink to wash his hands. “I’ll have the desk give you a list of recommendations.” He picked up her chart and began making notes.
Marco could only stare at the screen. Connecting the image to the heartbeat made it all real. He was a father. He would play ball, make couch cushion forts, and teach a little someone how to brush his or her teeth.
The reality of the responsibility rolled over him but where it had overwhelmed him when Eleanora first told him, this time it sent a surge of strength through him. He had no clue if he could be a good dad, but he could research it. He would research it. He would not let his child grow up without a good father.
A ridiculous sense of pride surged through him, but just as quickly the responsibility came into sharp focus. He had been raised working in his family’s hotels. His childhood was fun, but different. He didn’t know what a normal childhood looked like, what a good dad did.
What if all the research in the world couldn’t help him be a good father?
“You can get dressed now,” the doctor said as he headed for the door. “Your paperwork will be at the front desk.”
He left the room and Eleanora lifted herself to her elbows. “Why don’t you wait outside while I redress?”
He glanced at her and realized she was naked under the sheet. He’d been so preoccupied with the potential that something might be wrong with her or the baby he hadn’t even noticed. But with his attention drawn to the naked shoulders peeking out from the sheet, his mind whipped back to the images he had of her from their night together. Especially the smoothness of her pink skin.
“Earth to Marco. I’d like to get dressed and go home.”
He shook himself back to reality. “Sorry. I’ll be right outside the door if you need me.”
She smiled patiently. “I’ll be fine.”
He stood in the hallway beside her small exam room until she came out. Together they gathered the discharge papers that included the names of some obstetricians. Outside the hospital, she turned to the left side of the parking lot.
He stopped her. “My car’s this way.”
“And my car’s that way.”
He gaped at her. “You drove yourself to the hospital!”
“Well, I wasn’t going to call an ambulance when I felt okay—”
He rolled his eyes. “I’m following you home.”
She sighed. “I wouldn’t expect anything less.”
He trailed her onto the main road to a neat little apartment complex not far from the Grand York Rome. She drove slowly and carefully through the noise and crowds of a city in the throes of its peak season. He suspected she did that to stem his fears—or potential criticism. She pulled into the parking lot with equal care, and he parked beside her.
Stuffing her discharge papers into her purse, she walked toward his car. “There. I’m home. Safe and sound.”
The ambient sounds of the city surrounded them like the warm night air. “Why don’t you let me walk you to your apartment?”
She sighed as if she knew arguing was pointless and motioned for him to follow her into the building. They climbed the stairway to her floor, and she led him into her apartment.
“This is nice.” It reminded him of her. Tidy rooms with neutral toned furniture, but vivid-colored throw pillows and lamps that took the potentially dull rooms and made them bright and fun.
“You pay me enough to afford something nice.”
He was glad they did. He took a few steps into the orderly but vibrant space. The kitchen with white cabinets was good-sized beside a dining area with a black table and gray upholstered chairs.
“Are you checking for intruders?”
He wasn’t sure what he was doing but he suddenly felt odd about leaving. “I don’t know. It seems wrong to leave when you just came back from a hospital visit.”
“Because I panicked. I’m new at this. I didn’t know a little spotting was normal.”
He shrugged. “Neither did I.”
“That’s why the very kind doctor did a scan.”
He turned to face her. “It wasn’t protocol?”
“No. He wanted to alleviate my fears. I could see him holding back a chuckle when you charged in. He knew we were new, and we needed some reassurance.”
He thought back to the scan and swallowed hard. If he closed his eyes and focused, he could hear that heartbeat. The slow, solid sound that told him his child was fine.
“So, you’re okay?”
She shrugged. “Perfectly.”
“You don’t want me to stay?”
She frowned and studied him for a second. “You want to stay, don’t you?”
“I just had another whole set of feelings that threw me. I heard our baby’s heartbeat. He or she might have been a little too small to see, but I heard that heartbeat.”
“It was great, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.” He took a quick breath. “It would just make me feel better to stay here tonight.”
She sighed.
“I’m not talking as the father of your child or even your boss. I’m asking as your friend. I’m a little worried. Not big worried. Just a little worried. And you know how I hate things I can’t control. Humor me. Let me stay.” He paused, then added, “I’ll sleep on the couch.”
She laughed. “Well, at least I know you won’t pull up a chair beside my bed and stare at me all night.”
“I could. If you want me to.”
She gaped at him. “No! Seriously! I’m fine.” She shook her head. “But you’re not. Okay. Whatever. Sleep on the couch.” She turned to the bedroom door. “There are blankets and pillows in the linen closet in the hall. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“See you in the morning,” he called after her. The relief of her letting him stay filled him, relaxing his chest and back. He didn’t believe something was going to happen in the eight hours until morning, but he absolutely couldn’t handle the thought of leaving her alone—just in case.
He made a bed out of the sofa and laughed to himself as he tried to get comfortable on a piece of furniture that was too small for his feet. He watched some television, careful to keep the sound low so he didn’t wake her, and eventually fell asleep.
The ping of a text on his phone woke him. He bounced up, and remembered he was on her couch at the same time that the scent of frying bacon hit him.
“Hey, good morning!” Her voice came from the kitchen in the corner of the open-plan space.
He sucked in a long breath trying to wake himself. “Good morning.” He glanced down at his phone as he said that, tapping the screen to get to his text. Reading it, he frowned. “Pilot’s ready for us.”
She gaped at him. “What?”
“In fairness, I told him I wanted to leave first thing in the morning.” He looked at the time on his phone screen and winced. “It’s after nine.”
She set the bacon on the countertop that divided the kitchen and sitting area. “I need to get dressed. Here’s bacon. Eggs are in the refrigerator. Bread is on the counter to make toast.”
With that she scampered away, and he texted his limo driver. He had to go back to the hotel to get his things and Eleanora probably needed to at least tell Sheila she would be in New York for a few days.
Knowing he had time to eat before the limo driver got there, he polished off the bacon with some toast and a cup of coffee, then he walked to the bedroom door.
Knocking once, he said, “Limo’s here to pick me up. I need to go to the hotel to get my things. You can come with me and have time to talk to Sheila or we can come back and pick you up.”
She opened the door. Suitcase handle in one hand and wearing comfortable trousers and a white blouse, she smiled. “I’m ready when you are.” She rolled the suitcase to the front door, indicating he should follow her. “I would like a minute to set up a few things with Sheila. But, seriously, with video calls the way they are, I can talk to my staff every day. It’ll be like I’m there. They won’t even miss me.”
He smiled and nodded, but when she turned to lock the apartment door behind them, he swallowed. He’d seen her in white blouses and professional trousers a million times, so why they made his heart race this time he had no idea.
But he fully intended to get himself so accustomed to seeing her again that this attraction would wither away into nothing.